America's lock on freedom
By Lady Liberty
web posted January 16, 2006
We all want to keep ourselves, our families, and our property
safe. That's why we lock our car doors and tell our kids not to
talk to strangers. That's why some of us have alarm systems
installed in our homes, and one reason many of us choose to
have firearms. It's why we wear seatbelts and helmets; it's the
bottom line in our reasoning behind getting regular medical
checkups.
From smoke alarms to healthy eating, and from avoiding certain
parts of town after dark to not running with scissors, safety is our
bottom line. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be safe!
In fact, there are some who would consider protecting their
families to be a sacred duty, and I'm hard pressed to find an
argument against that thought. But no matter how hard we try,
sometimes bad things happen.
A car thief smashes through the windows of our locked car and
takes it away. Burglars bypass alarm systems. In a misguided
attempt toward further safety, our firearms are worthless in the
event we need them because we've carefully locked them up and
hidden the ammo in a separate place. The batteries in the smoke
alarms die, or that healthy food we've selected from a restaurant
menu is tainted with e. coli.
There are more than a few people who believe that the
government should join our own efforts and play a virtually
unlimited role in keeping us safe. In poll after poll, Americans
come down more on the side of perceived safety than on that of
freedom, making it obvious they value the former more than the
latter. Perhaps that's because many of them echo the same
opinion voiced by US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) when he
said, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
The PATRIOT Act is a prime example. We were told when the
measure was passed just days after 9/11 that its provisions were
neeed to protect us from another terrorist attack. We were also
told that the powers granted federal authorities in the Act would
not be used for anything but terror investigations, and that they
would not be abused. As recently as six months ago, the
PATRIOT Act and a planned expansion of it enjoyed solid
support despite ongoing concerns from civil liberties activists.
Of course, recent findings have indicated that abuses of
PATRIOT Act powers may have been committed (the
accusations have long been made, but recently released papers
provide some evidence to go along with the claims). Limiting the
PATRIOT Act to terror investigations was apparently never
seriously considered at all since early investigations under the
new powers included embezzlement and other criminal activities
entirely unrelated to terrorism.
But from the beginning, there have been those who have
defended the PATRIOT Act and its intrusions on two fronts: The
first — and most important — is that we've had no terror attacks
since its inception, so it must be working. The second is the
ubiquitous (and false) premise that "if you have nothing to hide,"
you face no threat from the law.
These arguments are specious at best. After all, if you look even
casually at the ongoing illegal immigration problem, you'll find that
terrorists are perfectly able to get into the country if they feel like
it, PATRIOT Act or not. And the domestic surveillance ongoing
by the NSA may or may not catch someone in a damning
conversation, but is it really catching terrorists? That's hard to
say since terrorists frequently talk in pre-arranged codes
whereas you and I are far more likely to say or write keywords
that will draw unwanted (and unwarranted in both senses)
government attention.
Airports search random travelers with the claim that it will
prevent more terror attacks similar to those that occurred on
9/11. But to the best of my knowledge, the men who committed
those attrocities were all young Middle Eastern men. There
wasn't a single female middle-aged journalist, young white
salesman and father, nor elderly couple on vacation who did
anything wrong. Yet it's illegal to racially profile air travelers,
which in and of itself shows the program is less about our safety
than it is about invasiveness.
Despite that, most Americans stand patiently in line to be
searched — or not — thinking it's for their own security, and
forgetting all together the rights to which they're entitled. They've
also conveniently ignored the fact that, despite support from both
citizens and Congress, many pilots are yet to carry firearms. This
is particularly inexcusable when we recall that the 9/11 terrorists
were armed with simple boxcutters! A gun would have easily put
a stop to their nefarious plans, but even now there are those who
seem to have more fear of a firearm in the hands of an
emminently responsible man (or woman) who knows how to use
it than they are of being x-rayed and manhandled at terminal
gates.
NFL stadiums are, at the behest of the NFL, searching everyone
who enters the gates. While that's certainly fairer than the
random searches engaged in by airports and the New York City
subway system, is it reasonable? A very few have protested; a
pair of cases remain in court. But the vast majority meekly wait
to have their bodies patted down by total strangers. Why do
they tolerate such an invasion of privacy and a violation of their
Fourth Amendment rights? Because they're told it will keep them
safe from somebody who might want to bomb or otherwise
target the stadium. (They apparently aren't thinking that an
explosive-laden homicide bomber would only kill a few whereas
a better funded and far more fearful terrorist would have
concealed a tiny vial of some nasty biological material that would
be both ideal for a large crowd and almost certainly undetectable
in a casual patdown.)
Drunk driving checkpoints stop and question all drivers. They're
supposed to offer positive publicity and remind those who drink
to arrange for designated drivers. But police typically use the
checkpoints as a reason to poke their heads into every vehicle
and to find even the smallest of infractions that might otherwise
have gone entirely unnoticed. They also ask many motorists at
these stops if they can take a look inside the vehicle — without
the cause required by law — and most are either too fearful or
too mistakenly cooperative to question the act. Besides, if it gets
drunk drivers off the road, we'll all be safer, won't we?
I don't like drunk drivers on the road any more than you
probably do. But stopping every car and effectively searching it
is a violation of rights that's not excused by the hope of catching
a drunk driver or two (especially since checkpoints are
publicized in advance and thus can be avoided by those it's
intended to stop). MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)
points out that support for sobriety checkpoints is overwhelming
and that only those who drink and drive are against the
measures. As far as I can tell, that only goes to prove yet again
that people are far more concerned with some appearance of
improved safety than they are for the dangers to civil liberties.
(The fact that such checkpoints have now expanded into
"impaired" driving checkpoints and even, in one case in Illinois, a
"stop everybody and see if they saw anything" checkpoint, only
makes the checkpoints more dangerous whether they make
anybody minimally safer or not.)
Even without the 9/11 terror attacks, I suspect that the use of
security cameras would be growing at an exponential pace.
Many cameras are now also equipped with microphones
ostensibly so that gunshots can be recorded and triangulated, but
which I wouldn't be surprised can also hear conversation nearby.
Most people seem to support the surveillance of public places as
preventing crime and thus representing another facet in the
government's ongoing efforts to keep its citizens safer."If you're
not doing anything wrong," these people say, "the cameras
shouldn't bother you." But yet again, there's some
misunderstanding as to just how much good — or harm — the
cameras could do.
The British government likes cameras a lot. They're everywhere.
But precisely how much good did all of those cameras do on 7/7
when the London undergound was the object of a terrorist
attack? While the numerous cameras that did catch something on
tape (there were over 20, as I recall) may have helped
reconstruct some of the timeline, they did nothing at all to prevent
the crime or to save any lives. So how were those commuters
made safer? And let's not even get started on those who monitor
those cameras and who abuse their powers! Now news is that
the Brits will engage in satellite surveillance of vehicles so as to
enforce speed limits, thus tracking every driver in the country (on
a voluntary basis at first, but do you really think that will last?).
The people who think the government should keep us all safe —
really, and completely safe from crime, terrorists, substandard
products, and ourselves — are also the people who think the
government should take care of us in many other regards as well.
Welfare programs, housing assistance, medical care, and more
are either already in place or being demanded by many. And
here's the thing: such government-provided care is already
available to some.
Cameras are everywhere, and law enforcement is mere seconds
away. No one is permitted to have firearms or other "dangerous"
ordnance. Medical care is provided without discrimination and
without charge. Hot food is served, clothing is handed out, and
the chances of someone breaking in are virtually non-existent.
Education, up to and including college, is free. Utopia, right?
Well, either that, or a penetentiary where safety is paramount in
the minds of virtually everybody, and freedom is nowhere to be
found.
The Bill of Rights has been relegated to a distant second when it
comes to matters of safety (or at least those things we're told are
about matters of safety). That's quite a change from the days
when real men who were real patriots said things like, "Give me
liberty, or give me death!" Now it's, "Give away liberty, and
keep me safe!" But the price for total safety — or at least as
total as is possible in an imperfect world — amounts to
imprisonment, something we're apparently more and more willing
to accept. The absence of bars is meaningless when it's really the
absence of freedom that tells.
We take freedom from criminals as punishment (and, ironically
for the purposes of this essay, to keep society safe from their
predations). And yet taking freedom away from ourselves is
somehow viewed as good, or at least necessary. That more
people don't instantly see everything that's wrong with that
picture is yet one more sign that, for all intents and purposes,
reads, "Go directly to jail..."
Lady Liberty is a graphic designer and pro-freedom activist
currently residing in the Midwest. More of her writings and other
political and educational information is available on her web site,
Lady Liberty's Constitution Clearing House, at
http://www.ladylibrty.com. E-mail Lady Liberty at
ladylibrty@ladylibrty.com.
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